


Old-Fashioned Romancer

by distractionpie



Series: JeanMarco Revival 2019 [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dating, Dumb boys who should probably talk about their feeings more, Grand(-ish) Gestures, M/M, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-28 22:37:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21144362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractionpie/pseuds/distractionpie
Summary: Like most college students, Marco is used to subsisting on a diet of cafeteria food and microwave meals. When Jean proposes doing something a little different, Marco thinks he means splashing out on pizza delivery. The experience he actually gets is a whole lot fancier; but when he finds out Jean’s motivation for the dramatic gesture, he’s less than pleased.





	Old-Fashioned Romancer

“Hey, sorry I’m late!”

Late? “Late for what?” Marco calls out, turning down the corner page of his book — not class related for once.

“Well, not late,” Jean shouts back from the hallway, “But I’d meant to be here sooner, not rushing. Are you ready?”

“I’m…” Marco frowns. He’s wearing a clean t-shirt and jeans, he supposes he could be ready for most things if he put shoes on and maybe grabbed a jacket but all he’d really had in mind was hanging out on the couch and reading the trashy murder mystery Connie had loaned him weeks ago. “I’ll need a couple of minutes,” he settles on, figuring that will at least by him time to work out what he’s supposed to be ready for.

“Great, because I’m starving.”

Was Jean asking if he was ready for dinner? Because Marco hadn’t eaten yet, but he’d been planning on heating up yesterday’s noodles, not cooking for both of them. Then he remembers. An offhand remark earlier in the week about mixing up their habit of living off cheap freezer meals and cafeteria food. Jean suggested Friday night as a good time, but Marco had a quiz this morning and for the past few days his brain hasn’t had any room for material not on the syllabus and hadn’t thought about it any further.

He gets up, leaving his book on the table, then Jean walks in and Marco nearly trips at the sight of him.

Not that he’d be averse to ending up on his knees right now. Jean has forgone his usual battered jeans and sweatshirt style in favour of sharply creased black slacks that cling to his legs and make them look a mile long and a vest that almost masks the fact his shirt hasn’t been pressed as it highlights the lines of his body, adding breadth to toned shoulders but nipping in to cradle the dip of his waist.

Had Jean been giving a presentation or something? Normally he practises those with Marco in advance, but he doesn’t recall being asked. Damnit. Marco hopes Jean didn’t think he was so caught up in his own quiz prep that he couldn’t make time to help.

Regardless, he looks good. Good enough that Marco is deeply tempted to say he’s not hungry for food and drag Jean into bed.

Which is when Jean tops the strangeness off by revealing what’s behind his back.

“Here,” he blurts out, and Marco gapes at the bright spray of flowers in his hands.

There are plants scattered all over their shared suite, Marco likes the way they add colour and a sense of air and nature to the rooms and, although Jean rolls his eyes, he never forgets to do his share of the watering, but these aren’t half-wilted garden-store clearance rescues. No, this is a cut bouquet, and not one that’s been sitting outside a gas-station for hours waiting for somebody desperate enough to resort to it. The blooms are bright and fresh, carefully arranged in a riot of lively petals

“I… I don’t think we actually own a vase,” Marco remarks and Jean frowns. “But we can put them in the sink for now!”

“I… right, I guess a vase isn’t the type of thing we… I didn’t think of that,” Jean says, and there’s a flustered air to him that Marco knows could turn to irritation all too easily because while Jean is far less prickly when it's just the two of them he still doesn’t take well to feeling foolish.

So he leans over and lifts the bouquet from Jean’s grip, breathing in the vibrant scent of the flowers as he leans over and presses a quick kiss to Jean’s lips.

When he pulls back, Jean is smiling — not quite his regular smile, it’s smaller than that, almost shy, although Marco can’t imagine why, but he takes a moment to memorise the curve of it before going to place the flowers in water.

With the done, his kisses Jean, more thoroughly

“Nuh-uh,” Jean says, pulling back with a teasing grin. “C’mon, we don’t want to be late for our reservations.”

Marco laughs.

But once they’re out of the apartment, it seems like Jean really does have a specific destination in mind and Marco’s curiosity increases with every turn they take as he mentally crosses places off the list of the usual restaurants and finds himself coming up blank as to where Jean has picked.

Then they come to a stop in front of a small corner place with red-curtained windows and an elegant cursive sign above the door reading ‘The Star of India.”

Marco raises his eyebrows. This is a strange choice for a place for the two of them to go — while he loves Indian cuisine, Jean doesn’t have a high tolerance for spicy foods but does have some ridiculous idea in his head that people will think badly of him if he orders any dish marked less than a medium on the menu and so always ends up with food he can’t enjoy. Marco has tried to convince him a few times that nobody other than Jean himself thinks butter chicken is the mark of a weak character, but Jean remains stubbornly determined to make himself uncomfortable so usually Marco steers them towards places where it won’t be an issue.

“I… are you sure?” he asks. Since Jean has apparently latched on to his idle suggestion that they ought to eat well for once, surely they should be getting something that Jean likes too.

“Of course,” Jean says, as if it’s perfectly normal for him to want to go out to a place that serves food he can barely stand, then he’s grabbing Marco’s hand and pulling him towards the door before he can contemplate if he’s stepped into a mirror-world.

It’s fancy inside, a proper white tablecloths and silver service place and Marco looks around at the other patrons awkwardly, suddenly feeling rather shabby. He’d thought Jean was overdressed for a casual dinner, but now he’s realising that he should have taken the sharp outfit as a cue to change into something a little more fitting for their destination. And when Jean talks to the server, Marco realises he hadn’t been joking about the reservations either.

“You could have warned me!” he hisses as they’re led over to a corner table.

Innocence isn’t a look Jean wears often and his face suits it ill, yet Marco is surprised by his own certainty that Jean is utterly sincere in his puzzled, “What?” as if it has never occurred to him that Marco would find the formality of the setting weird, despite the fact it was so far out from their usual habits.

Jean is definitely pulling out all the stops, but Marco can’t make sense of why. It’s nowhere near either of their birthdays or valentines, and their six-month anniversary isn’t for another three weeks and, while he could understand celebrating on their nearest free day, this seems excessively premature.

They’re seated in a well designed little alcove, cutting off the noise and chatter of the restaurant and lit by a candle flickering on the table, casting the whole table in a soft glow.

They both flick through the menus quietly, Marco only grimacing slightly at the prices which are more than the places they’d usually go but not quite of reach as a one-off indulgence.

The food looks good, so good that Marco maybe goes a little overboard with his order, and Jean even orders something that might be mild enough for him to actually enjoy eating.

“Anything else?” their severs asks and Jean raises his eyebrows inquiringly at Marco who shakes his head. They’ve already ordered so much food that he’s really hoping this place isn’t so fancy that they’ll object to them taking the leftovers home.

“No, we’re good here,” Jean says.

“Hold up. I don’t want to order more food, but shouldn’t you have told them to make separate bills,” Marco points out as the server leaves. They’ve both worked too many food service jobs not to be in the habit of saying so beforehand just in case the place they’re visiting isn’t well set up to calculate a split afterwards.

Jean shakes his head. “This is my plan, I’ve got it.”

It’s not so unusual for them to trade off paying for things rather than going to the trouble of splitting a bill, since it tends to work itself out in the long term, but this place is a lot more upmarket than their usual haunts and Marco had ordered a lot in the expectation of paying for himself so it will take more than grabbing Jean’s morning coffee for him to even things out between them.

“Okay,” he says, but his curiosity is eating him up inside. Alright, possibly the feeling is just hunger, since he skipped lunch and everything here smells so good, but, “But what’s all this sudden fanciness and generosity in aid of? This goes way beyond getting some non-takeout food, you’re gonna spoil me so bad I won’t be able to face the cafeteria.”

Pink blooms across Jean’s cheeks.

“First dates are about making an impression,” he says. “I want this to be a good one.”

First date?

“We’ve been out loads of times,” Marco reminds him, perplexed. “We were at the movies last weekend.”

Jean scowls. “Eren and Armin were there.”

Marco rolls his eyes. “On the other side of the theatre, we only happened to be standing behind them in line for popcorn, that doesn’t make it a group outing.” He wishes he could be surprised at the notion of Jean writing off an entire date just because of the offence of Eren being in the vicinity, but he’s not.

“So you’re saying that going to see Clowns II: The Rise of the Mime was our first date?” Jean remarks dubiously.

Put like that, it sounds stupid. Clowns II would be a terrible first date movie, is admittedly not prime date material in general, but even if Jean has decided laughing at terrible horror movies doesn’t count as a date, it hardly makes this their first. “No, of course not, what about our camping trips?” he says. “Or bowling night? Or going to the corn maze together?”

“We did all of those things before, as friends,” Jean points out. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy doing them with you, but when you said about going out to dinner, well, I figured if you were finally willing to try going on a proper date with me, I ought to pull out all the stops.”

“I… wait, if you don’t consider anything before this a proper date, what do you think is going on between us?” Marco asks, suddenly fearful.

“Oh, I know we’re a thing,” Jean says dismissively, and Marco feels his stomach churn because they aren’t a ‘thing’, they’re a couple. Or at least he thought they were. “But—”

“No, we aren’t,” Marco protests, then watches in horror as Jean’s expression falls, cheeks paling as he flinches back.

“Oh. So—”

Marco doesn’t want to even consider the thoughts he can see flitting across Jean’s face right now, let alone hear them. “No! Fuck, I mean…”

He reaches out and grabs Jean’s hands in a panic, feeling Jean’s instincts to run in every tense line of his body, and how could Marco possibly have screwed up so badly that he’d given Jean cause to feel like this for even a moment? Has he been waiting for a date like this for months? Expecting flowers and dressing up and candle-lit dinners as indicators of the seriousness of their relationship? The sudden thought of him questioning Marco’s intentions every time all he got was pizza and video-games -nothing that would make anybody feel special- brings a lump of guilt to Marco’s throat. His momma always taught him to treat other people who he’d like to be treated and along the way he’s come to recognise that the way other people act often reflects their own wants. He’d taken it as a joke at the time, but now it hits him that Jean brought him flowers this evening because underneath all the attitude he really is a candlelight and flowers kind of guy. And Marco has been letting him down. He’s normally so good at social cues, yet he’s known for years that Jean’s prickly exterior hides a soft heart and now he feels like a fool for never following through to the conclusion that Jean might be a sentimental type if given the right circumstances.

“I only mean that you don’t have to do all this to impress me,” he assures Jean quickly. The last thing he wants is Jean thinking he’s rejecting the evening’s romantic gestures.

“So we are a thing?” Jean asks and Marco groans.

“We’re not a _‘thing’_,” he corrects. “We’re a couple. I mean… I thought we were and I want to be, as long as you’re okay with that.”

“I…” Jean’s hands twitch and Marco squeezes them soothingly, though that only makes the flush in his cheeks worse. “But we never did anything serious,” he says, which Marco thinks is bullshit, because they did plenty of things he doesn’t do casually, but clearly Jean is thinking in more public terms than what they got up to on cramped dorm room mattresses.

“I’m happy with anything as long as you’re with me,” Marco explains. At least he is as long as Jean understands what this means to him, that he definitely isn’t willing to settle for it being a ‘thing’ between friends, though given everything Jean’s done tonight Marco doesn’t think he has to worry about that. “I didn’t realise you wanted fancier dates.”

“No, I’m not complaining!” Jean protests. “Pizza and a movie was just… not really clear what the meaning was. But now we’re clear, it’s all cool.” But Marco ignores that. If Jean has any doubts that they’re dating then he clearly hasn’t been doing this boyfriend thing well enough. The idea that this is their first date feels absurd to Marco, but Jean deserves to be treated right and if he wants romance then next time they go out Marco is going to sweep him off his feet so hard that there’s no room for doubt.

Although it’s going to be hard to top Jean’s efforts tonight.


End file.
